According to some estimates, there are as many as 40,000 lobbyists in Washington, D.C., but you don't even need all of your fingers to count how many work on behalf of artists and arts communities (record labels, broadcasting and other corporate interests in the entertainment industry aside). This weekend, a handful of those arts advocates, including representatives from Americans for the Arts, the Future of Music Coalition and the League of American Orchestras, convened in New York City as part of the annual conference for Association of Performing Arts Presenters. Here's what some of the tiny number of people who lobby for arts in America have been up to:

Mito Habe-Evans/NPR

MARIO GARCIA DURHAM

Organization: The Association of Performing Arts Presenters (APAP), a "national service and advocacy organization" that represents the interests of presenters (the arts groups, venues and individuals who produce performances), artist agents and managers, students, associates, honorary life members, consultants, vendors and others who provide support for the presentation of live performance. APAP hosts an annual conference for its 1,400 members in New York City.

What he does: President & CEO, former board member. "I arrived on the job less then a hundred days ago when we were already on the short track for our conference. So it's been a little bit busy around here."

Policy issues: Foreign guest artists' visas, arts in cultural exchange, arts education, health care for artists, tax policy, government funding, white spaces.

Name an issue that you're working on which will have a significant impact on the musical community: White spaces — frequencies in between broadcast channels of the broadcast spectrum in which wireless equipment can operate. "There are certain broadcast bands that are used by performing arts centers for wireless microphones, but some of them have been sold, given away, or are in use or other purposes [in particular for unlicensed television band devices (TVBDs)]. This effects the very nuts-and-bolts work theaters are doing in their own houses. We're in discussions about how those frequencies are allocated as a member of the Performing Arts Alliance," a coalition of performing arts advocates.

Give us another example where you've hit some serious challenges: Foreign guest artists' visas. "Generally the trend has been toward improvement, but I still have individuals who tell stories of last minute delays and the inability to bring legitimate artists to this country. It's been extremely frustrating for arts organizations when they've done everything they can and have still someone held up. Sometimes it's unpredictable as to when they'll get the approval. And since many projects are planned years in advance, the timing can really put people on edge because you're not sure until it's absolutely done. I think visas will continue to be an issue because they're tied into the larger issue of national security."

According to some estimates, there are as many as 40,000 lobbyists in Washington, D.C., but you don't even need all of your fingers to count how many work on behalf of artists and arts communities (record labels, broadcasting and other corporate interests in the entertainment industry aside). This weekend, a handful of those arts advocates convened in New York City as part of the annual conference for Association of Performing Arts Presenters. We spoke with representatives from the Future of Music Coalition the League of American Orchestras and APAP itself. Here's what some of the tiny number of people who lobby for arts in America have been up to:

Mito Habe-Evans/NPR

ROBERT LYNCH

Organization: Americans for the Arts, whose mission is "to serve, advance and lead the network of organizations and individuals who cultivate, promote, sustain and support the arts in America."

What he does: President and CEO, former registered lobbyist. "I've been with Americans for the Arts for 26 years. I came when it was the National Assembly of Local Arts Agencies in 1985 and ran that organization until we merged with the American Council for the Arts in 1987. In the last decade we've folded in four other organizations: The Arts and Business Council, The Business Committee for the Arts, the State Arts Advocacy League of America and the National Organization for Statewide Assemblies of Arts Agencies."

Policy Issues: Arts & culture funding, protecting our national heritage, national service for artists, arts education, lifelong learning, tax issues (charitable giving, tax fairness for artists and writers, and deductions for artists' donations of work), arts and cultural exchange, foreign guest artists' visas, health care.

Name an issue that you're working on which will have a significant impact on the musical community: Healthcare for artists, but also advancement of the arts as integral to healthcare and the healing process. "We wanted to find ways to reform healthcare so that artists and workers in the arts industries could find less expensive ways of getting coverage. But more and more we are partnering with organizations like the Society for the Arts in Healthcare, which focus on the benefits of the arts in healing. We co-sponsored a two-day seminar "Arts in Healing for Warriors" with the Society and Walter Reed [National Military Medical Center]. One music therapist talked about the use of music to heal brain dysfunctions — she was also the woman who helped in Congresswoman Gabrielle Gifford's recovery. Right now I don't have any specific legislation in front of me, but we've been asking Congress for more funding for research to look at increasing access to the arts for older Americans and those with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Give us another example where you've hit some serious challenges: The arts in cultural exchange and diplomacy. "I think it is hugely valuable for America to be represented by its artists so that the rest of the world can get to know the best of America better. In terms of our federal government, they don't invest nearly enough in that, even though it has a proven track record going back to the days of Louis Armstrong, Paul Taylor and others traveling the world and being great cultural ambassadors [for the U.S. State Department starting in the 1950s]. The slightly good news is that as we advocate for money, there has been slightly more money over the years.

According to some estimates, there are as many as 40,000 lobbyists in Washington, D.C., but you don't even need all of your fingers to count how many work on behalf of artists and arts communities (record labels, broadcasting and other corporate interests in the entertainment industry aside). This weekend, a handful of those arts advocates convened in New York City as part of the annual conference for Association of Performing Arts Presenters. We spoke with representatives from Americans for the Arts, the League of American Orchestras and APAP itself. Here's what some of the tiny number of people who lobby for arts in America have been up to:

Mito Habe-Evans/NPR

MICHAEL BRACY

Organization: Future of Music Coalition, "a national nonprofit organization that works to ensure a diverse musical culture where artists flourish, are compensated fairly for their work, and where fans can find the music they want."

What he does: Policy Director and Board Member. "I am a registered lobbyist. I also co-founded the organization eleven years ago. We're a tween."

Policy issues: Copyright law, intellectual property, digital rights, piracy, artists' compensation, health insurance for artists, media ownership, radio regulation, public and non-commercial radio, net neutrality, censorship and indecency.

Name an issue that you've worked on which has had a significant impact on the musical community: Net Neutrality. "In 2002-03, when the technology was still transitioning from dial-up, the FCC had an important decision to make: whether the Internet would be like cable TV, where carriers pick and choose what kind of content goes over the pipe, or more like a telephone, where anyone can call anyone else. We were able to mobilize hundreds of musicians and pull them into a coordinated campaign to help policy makers understand that the future structure of the Internet could really stifle nascent innovations in the music community if net neutrality protections weren't put into place. Without net neutrality, there'd be no blogosphere, no YouTube, no Internet radio, no Rhapsody and Spotify." [FMC's campaign continues as Rock the Net.]

Give us another example where you've hit some serious challenges: Low Power FM Radio legislation — the creation of low power radio stations that could fit on the FM dial between existing stations and bring more community voices to the airwaves. "It took us ten years to pass. It's amazing when you look back at a piece of legislation and realize you just spent a quarter of your life trying to pass a bill. The broadcast lobby is really powerful. They convinced Congress that these stations would create signal interference with existing stations and that Congress needed to restrict the service to small towns and rural parts of the country. It was really frustrating because the real need for low power FM is in urban markets, where there are more people and there's greater demand for licenses. After engineering studies and challenges to those studies, we were finally able to pass that legislation a year ago. Next year, there will be several hundred new low power licenses issued by the FCC."

According to some estimates, there are as many as 40,000 lobbyists in Washington, D.C., but you don't even need all of your fingers to count how many work on behalf of artists and arts communities (record labels, broadcasting and other corporate interests in the entertainment industry aside). This weekend, a handful of those arts advocates convened in New York City as part of the annual conference for Association of Performing Arts Presenters. We spoke with representatives from the Future of Music Coalition, Americans for the Arts and APAP itself. Here's what some of the tiny number of people who lobby for arts in America have been up to:

Mito Habe-Evans/NPR

HEATHER NOONAN

Organization: League of American Orchestras, an organization that "leads, supports and champions America's orchestras and the vitality of the music they perform. Its diverse membership of nearly 900 orchestras across North America runs the gamut from world-renowned symphonies to community groups, from summer festivals to student and youth ensembles."

What she does: Vice President for Advocacy and a registered lobbyist. "I've been at the League for 16 years and have seen a lot of change, as you might expect with Washington's frequently shifting cast of characters."

Policy issues: The public value of orchestras, NEA funding, arts education, cultural exchange, travel for musicians, non-profit tax issues, charitable giving incentives, electronic media, white space (areas on the broadcast spectrum in between channels used for wireless microphones), disaster relief for non-profits.

Name an issue that you're working on which will have a significant impact on the musical community: Charitable giving incentives. "Charitable giving — actually private contributions of all kinds — constitutes around 40% of orchestra revenue on average. In the Congressional supercommittee on tax reform that was convening over the last several months, there were numerous proposals being considered with around 13 possible changes in the deductibility of contributions. Throughout that discussion we worked very closely with the broader non-profit community, making the case that charitable giving is very different than the other deductions taxpayers make because it's not about returning money to the taxpayer. It's about returning money to the community. Ultimately, none of the specific proposals have gained traction, but certainly discussions about tax reform will continue in the coming year."

Give us another example where you've also hit some serious challenges: Disaster relief for non-profits. "All the way through Hurricane Katrina, arts organizations and centers were ineligible for disaster relief from FEMA. It's a little murky as to why that ban was put in place. But back in 2006, together with our fellow national performing arts organizations, we were able to work with Congress to amend FEMA policy so that arts organizations would be eligible for assistance. Working on policy can be slow going, so the hope was that there'd be eligibility in the future but not an occasion on which an organization would need to avail itself of that relief. When Nashville flooded [in 2010], places like the Nashville Symphony's orchestra hall were severely damaged, but they were able to take advantage of FEMA support to help with their substantial repairs."

Courtesy of the Pahinui Ohana

Gabby Pahinui (center), playing in his family's backyard with (from left to right) Leland "Atta" Isaacs, Philip Pahinui, Cyril Pahinui and Martin Pahinui. This photo is in the album insert for the 1972's Gabby.

As the Oscar race heats up, one contender has already won over fans in Hawaii, where the movie was filmed. And not just for its story of a family grappling with death and infidelity — but also for its soundtrack. The Descendants has no orchestral score. Instead, director Alexander Payne chose to fill his movie exclusively with music by Hawaii artists — much of it from existing recordings.

Payne didn't know much about the music when he started the project. Then he discovered one of the giants of Hawaiian music, Gabby Pahinui.

"And when I started listening to Gabby, I just fell in love," Payne says. "So much so that I considered for awhile trying to score the whole film with his music. And I wound up not doing that because there are so many other Hawaiian artists to show and discover. But his remains the anchoring voice in the film."

Enlarge Courtesy of Sony Music

All hail.

Courtesy of Sony Music

All hail.

Adele can tuck a couple more feathers into her overstuffed beehive: in 2011, no album sold more copies than the British singer's 21, and no song was purchased more times than her monster single "Rolling In the Deep."

These triumphs were judged by Nielsen SoundScan and released yesterday as part of the company's year-end industry report, but they'll come as no surprise if you've followed the charts with any regularity this year. To say that Adele was in a class by herself in 2011 doesn't do her dominance justice. In a music industry environment that's adapting to low expectations, 21 was a freak of nature.

How important was Adele to the music industry this year? The headline on SoundScan's report was "Album Sales Up for the First Time Since 2004," but if you subtract the sales of 21 from the total, that growth disappears. That would be like talking about 2011 without mentioning Occupy Wall Street or the Kardashians, and the report gives us any number of reasons we can't ignore her. A few party favors for your next music industry cocktail hour:

• In 2011, 21 sold 5,824,000 copies. The second-best selling album of the year, Michael Buble's Christmas, didn't even manage half that.
• No other album has sold more than 5 million copies in a year since 2004.
• 21 was the number one album on Billboard's album chart 13 times in 2011. That's one out of every four weeks for the entire year.
• After the album debuted in the top spot in March, it didn't slip out of the top five until December. This week it regained the no. 1 spot.
• Nearly one out of every three people who purchased 21 in 2011 got a digital copy, making it the first album ever to sell more than 1 million digital copies in the year of its release.

Enlarge Steven Taylor/Courtesy of Warner Bros.

Common.

Steven Taylor/Courtesy of Warner Bros.

Common.

The Chicago rapper Common has been in the hip-hop game for almost two decades. He released his debut, Can I Borrow a Dollar?, in 1992, and his ninth album, The Dreamer, The Believer, two weeks ago.

In his latest work, the rapper-actor has not strayed from the themes listeners have come to know him for. It is an album of lyrical prowess, lovelorn tributes and good old-fashioned name-calling. Producer No I.D. makes his mark on the entirety of the album, much like he did on the critically-acclaimed Resurrection — most notably on the hip-hop classic "I Used to Love H.E.R."

In a phone interview, Common told me he was "inspired to make music that is the essence of hip-hop and to let it be something that goes beyond that." Going beyond that included letting go of what he called "the torch of consciousness" he often felt he had to carry in his lyrics. Case in point? The fiery wordplay and hard-hitting beat behind the track "Sweet," which was the focus of our back and forth.

What is one of your favorite tracks on The Dreamer, The Believer, and what was the inspiration behind it?

The song that has been getting the most attention has been "Sweet." A lot of people are trying to figure out who I'm talking about. There was no one I particularly had in mind, but if you're offended, then there's something to be said about how you see yourself.

How would you describe the feel and production of the song?

It's rough. When No I.D. first played it for me, I just knew it was going to be a problem. We were going through some samples, and when I heard this I just knew I had to go in on it.

How does "Sweet" fit the natural progression of the album?

It represents the aggression and determination of the believer. The cat that walks into the middle of the ring and just knows he's the best. That knows he's the greatest.

How do you want people to feel after they hear it?

To feel that old school, in-your-face hip-hop. It's confrontational, sometimes telling you what you don't want to hear, but it's passionate and honest. We all could use a little more fire.

How do you feel you've changed lyrically in this track and overall on the album?

I went back to working one producer, and what better person than someone I've grown up with? I feel like this album captures that old thing and gives a look on my past, present and future frame of mind.

As an actor I'm able to be more expressive. Acting has helped me to be more open in my music. With songs like "Sweet," I'm able to be like, "You know what? I ain't holding back nothin'." Because in acting you can't hold back. As an artist, at a certain point I felt like because I established a certain consciousness in my lyrics that I wasn't letting myself express that different side. I got to explore that side more with this album, with songs like "Sweet."

I consider myself a work in progress. Any time I'm asked about my style I say I'm progressing. How I describe my music I say is progressive because I know that I'm constantly changing and growing and evolving. To the core, Common Sense is a loving, creative, Southside man who loves life, believes in God and loves love.

NPR

Explore NPR Music's interactive memorial to the musicians, songwriters and producers who died in 2011.

2011 inches toward its close, and we here at NPR Music are close to wrapping up our look back at the year in music. Today, Morning Edition looks back at some of the musicians who died in 2011.

Following the deaths of Gil Scott-Heron, in May, and Amy Winehouse, in July, tributes and remembrances ricocheted around the music world for weeks, but we lost many more songwriters, instrumentalists, singers and producers who will leave behind rich legacies. A few: E Street Band saxophonist Clarence Clemons, Cape Verdean singer Cesaria Evora, cellist Bernard Greenhouse, singer Trish Keenan, jazz drummer Paul Motian, and songwriters Jerry Leiber and Nickolas Ashford. You can hear more from these musicians, share your thoughts and find links to obituaries, interviews and more by visiting our In Memoriam interactive feature.

Enlarge Daniel Wilkinson/U.S. Embassy Kabul Afghanistan/flickr.com

A performance at the Afghan National Institute of Music in November of 2010.

Daniel Wilkinson/U.S. Embassy Kabul Afghanistan/flickr.com

A performance at the Afghan National Institute of Music in November of 2010.

Afghanistan sits at a crossroads between central Asia, Iran and the Indian subcontinent, and the country's music reflects that. Kabul hosted two international music festivals this fall — one traditional, the other a rock concert — but music is still a sensitive issue. International donors, including the U.S., have helped refurbish a conservatory in Kabul, but some of the students say they still face disapproval from extremist elements, even at the university.

Just over one-year-old, the Afghan National Institute of Music is something of a revival of musical traditions that have been battered by years of war, and sometimes, religious prohibition. Students at the Institute practice Western instruments as well as traditional ones, like the tabla (drums well known in Indian classical music) or the rubab (a sort of cross between a banjo and a sitar with sympathetic strings that drone along with the melody and a resonating chamber that is covered with skin and sometimes filled with egg shells).

But Afghanistan also has a long tradition of controversy about music, with rural religious leaders often labeling it an un-Islamic foreign vice enjoyed by city-dwellers. That's sometimes still the case today according to one student.

Charshambay is a willow-thin tabla student from northern Afghanistan. He says that some of his religion teachers at Kabul University have tried to convince him that music is forbidden, and he's even been told not to practice his tabla in the dormitory. He doesn't care. For him, the music is a gift from god. Something else does worry him though.

"I'm worried about losing our culture," says Charshambay. He says many unique traditions from Afghanistan's different regions are being lost in the melting pot of globalization — that's a fear shared by ethnomusicologists.

John Baily is head of the Afghan Music Unit at the University of London. He says some modern instruments have crowded out traditional ones, and that many Afghan weddings now feature one-man bands with lots of electronic help.

But Baily, an accomplished rubab player himself, is encouraged by the Afghan National Institute, and he recently visited Kabul and put on a concert along with some other Afghan masters. He still finds the issue of music in Afghanistan to be a touchy one, as musicians are still considered somewhat irreputable, and those who support it most publically link music to religion, like some of Afghanistan's Sufi orders.

"Those who support music strongly here actually see it from a religious point of view," says Baily. "From their point of view — and you hear this a lot in Afghanistan — music is 'ghazairoo,' food for the soul, and I think that's such a wonderful idea."

Musicians from the Afghan National Institute have also been turning Afghan instruments toward Western music, most recently in "Bolero" by Maurice Ravel.